In Brief

A Very Concise Security Technology Time Line

From wooden locks to Blaster and Sobig

December 01, 2003 — CSO —

2000 B.C	Wooden mechanical locks used in Egypt.
333 B.C.		Alexander the Great cuts the Gordian Knot with his sword and goes on to conquer much of the known world.
870	First all-metal locks appear in England.
1790	Joseph Bramah challenges anyone to defeat his "unpickable" Bramah lock. (Bramah is better known today for inventing the flush toilet.)
1851	Alfred Hobbs picks Bramah's lock in 44 hours. Panic spreads among bankers and merchants dependent on Bramah's and similar locks.
1856	George Price publishes his Treatise on Fire- and Thief-Proof Depositories and Locks and Keys, which becomes known as The Burglars' Bible among bankers.
1904	Houdini extracts himself from one-of-a-kind handcuffs built over the course of five years and designed to be "escape-proof"
1940s	Theory of self-replicating code is brought to public light by John von Neumann.
1978	Digital uses ARPAnet to send what may be the first spam message.
1981	Apple II systems fall victim to the first computer virus known as Elk Cloner.
1983	WarGames, starring Matthew Broderick, becomes a hit. Computer hacking goes mainstream for the first time with noncomputer audiences.
1986	First PC virus, called Brain, begins replicating itself on floppy disks.
1988	Morris worm causes $98M in damage to computer systems worldwide.
1990	Robert Morris, worm author, sentenced to three years' probation.
2000	Russian hacker steals thousands of credit card numbers from CD Universe's website.
2001	Code Red worm infects more than 350,000 computers in 24 hours.
2002-present	Klez, Sobig, Blaster and no end in sight.